


a breath renewed

by Crykea



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, I got all poetic prosey again, Introspection, this can be snippy or platonic but I'm gay so I'm tagging it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 18:20:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20139895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crykea/pseuds/Crykea
Summary: Sasha and Azu don't have time to make it up. There's too much at stake and too little need for conversation. They aren't alike. They make it work.





	a breath renewed

**Author's Note:**

> oof ouch my feelings

Sasha reminds Azu of tight corners and dark spaces.

There’s a flighty look in her eyes and a twitch in her fingers. There’s a hunch in her shoulders. There’s an all-consuming feeling of being crushed-- of being buried when she stands next to her. She’s small and dark and blends well with the shadows in a way that makes Azu think of prison cells and crawlspaces. The blunt cut of her hair sawed of roughly with a sharpened dagger hangs slightly in her eyes as though she hasn’t cut it since joining the party. There’s not much time to get a haircut on the road, to be fair. There isn’t much time to replace the split soles on a pair of dusty boots that tell tales of carriage chases and rough landings.

Scrapes and scars litter her skin. The signs of life on the street are ever present in the flick of her wrist-- always so well trained with a knife. Worry can’t do justice to what Azu feels when she watches Sasha stab a man in the kidneys without blinking an eye. The shake of fingers that comes with nerves is never present in her hands. She wields a dagger like a surgeon’s tool, if that surgeon was cutting out an organ with a frost covered knife, that is. 

Her favourite daggers are not a surprise to anyone. The fire that lights up the void of her irises flickers in one tightly grasped hand as the chill and frost of another blade coats her outward appearance. Her icy exterior has warmed since meeting new people, but hypothermia is a blade that cuts deep and does not heal neatly. Sasha's resolve is made of adamantine: strong and durable. 

Standing on ice rinks of melted glass bump lazily over the ruined remains of an abandoned building, its ghosts trapped under murky brown glass. Her blood is blue but it lands hot and red on the sun-beat dunes, mixing with sweat and humidity. She doesn't take off her jacket. There's little comfort for her in this desert and she will take what she can get. The ground in Damascus is flat enough for Azu to roll a ball down and watch it shrink in the distance for days.

Sasha doesn't say it, but Azu watches her eyes flick around her places to hide and knows how she feels. Azu is lying to herself. She doesn't know how she feels because tight spaces make the oxygen in her lungs choke up inside the curve of her throat, and Sasha kisses like she's stealing her breath. Sasha only hugs when she needs to be small-- when she needs to be compressed. Azu holds her tight and imagines that Sasha wants her the same way she wants to be hidden.

Azu can't find comfort in small places, but she figures that if small spaces felt like the vulnerability of Sasha's hands between her own, she might not mind them as much.

* * *

Sasha would never admit it, but Azu scares her. (No, she doesn't. She could never. Not really.)

Azu is big, pink and demanding of attention. Her armour gleams of importance-- of honour. She has rules, and morals that she sticks too no matter what. It’s hard to stay hidden beside her and it makes Sasha uncomfortable. The glow in of her pauldrons adds a faux blush to her cheeks that colours the dark brown a neon pink. Sasha wants to find it ridiculous.

She is all open land and yawning sky, wide smile stretching for days on end as though not even a cloud could break her. Rain doesn’t fall in a desert. Her hands are large with fingers that grip tightly to the handle of her battle axe as dark glowers come over her face. In the thick of a battle, she is in her element, cutting people down and stepping in front of her friends. Eldarion always told Sasha that red and pink clashed horribly and to never wear them together, but as rivulets of blood trickle down from the blade of Azu’s axe, Sasha doesn’t understand how Eldarion couldn’t see the beauty in contrast.

There are bags under her eyes that no amount of sleep can cure. Not everyone was made to be an adventurer, but Azu is proof that even people not born for the task can learn how to tighten their bootstraps and jump in headfirst. Her armour is clunky and loud, echoing with tale of wide open planes. Each step shows a heaviness that comes less from the metal and more from stories Sasha has never been told. They each have family that’s been taken from them. They each have something worth fighting for. Azu keeps her secrets locked tight in her throat and only shares them through the press of lips and scrape of tusks to Sasha’s forehead-- In the way she softly brushes Sasha’s too-long hair from her eyes.

Azu’s hair has grown out slightly and it coils tightly against her scalp. It’s no wonder the woman chose to pledge her life to Aphrodite. Her heart is big enough that sometimes Sasha is surprised to see it not bursting from inside her breastplate. Instead of in her chest, Azu keeps her heart on her sleeve kept safely under the protection of one pauldron. The way the hot red light of Rome hits her arms makes streaks of cherry red line down the metal, imitating a wound deep enough that all Sasha can do is hold the woman’s hand tightly in her own.

The sunlight in Azu’s honey brown eyes is red as if covered in the smoke of wildfire. She runs warm under Sasha’s fingertips, overheating in a metal cage Sasha can’t figure out why she keeps on in the burning heat. The tusks that poke out from over her bottom lip are sharp.

The inside of the cellar is small, dark, cold, unwelcoming. There’s a discomfort in the woman that shows itself through the way her foot taps harshly against the floor and through the slight raise in her volume. Voices don’t echo in closed up chambers. Sounds are muffled between four thin walls. The woman glowing in the middle of the room reminds Sasha of a lit stick of dynamite hidden haphazardly underneath a metal bowl. A small container will never be able to protect the outside world if the wick remains lit.

Scarred, gloved hands holding rough armoured ones. Azu belongs outside where the sky meets the earth on the horizon only after millions of miles. There’s no space too big to hold Azu, but she doesn’t belong in a small container to gather dust. The vastness of the outdoors does not appeal to Sasha. There aren’t places to hide. Azu makes empty space feel filled to the brim. Maybe if Sasha stays close to her, she’ll be less visible-- less afraid.

As Sasha is falling through inky blue extraplanar space, she looks up at Azu. Even in the bleak darkness of wherever they are, a warmth stays lodged in Sasha’s chest and pours out in thick tears from her wide eyes as she looks back up at the glowing pink figure. Somehow, the fall is both too long and too short, but not once do her eyes close. Her chilled blue hand, holding Azu’s just moments before, reaches gently up to cover her mouth. The open empty fog feels like a cold hug, nothing at all like the warm embrace she remembers almost distantly.

  
She was wrong to think of her as she did. There was nothing about Azu that told of empty space, and open land, she was warmth, and love, and loyalty. Sasha was afraid of openness, but she could  _ never _ have been afraid of Azu. Not really.

**Author's Note:**

> find me online @crykea and @alicedaisytonner


End file.
